Every Black has a Black Side
by Fixated On You
Summary: Sirius Black wasn't always happy, go-lucky with a larrikin sense of humor. After all, it's impossible to be happy in Azkaban. A day after Peter Pettigrew "exploded" himself, Sirius finds himself in Azkaban with all his bad memories. Contains Linkin Park l


**Every Black has a black side**

_**I woke up to the cold of the static**_

_**And put my cold feet on the floor**_

Sirius woke up. He felt very cold. His feet were icy and his head felt hazy and unclear. The nightmare he had? It had all seemed so real.

_**Forgot all about yesterday**_

_**Remembering I'm pretending to be**_

_**Where I'm not anymore**_

"I'm going to barf," he had said, being full of Lily's pudding.

"Isn't that sweet?" she retorted sarcastically.

"There there…" James put his arm around her. "I want to barf as well."

There was the sound of a baby crying and Lily quickly hurried to tend to him. "Aw, Harry. You're the only person around who's not going to barf. I'm not so alone in this world after all…"

_Alone in the world…_

_**A little taste of hypocrisy**_

_**And I'm left in the wake of the mistake**_

_**Slow to react**_

He realized that he was in prison. It was very cold behind bars….

Sirius wondered why he was here. _I'm going mad, aren't I? _

It was all a mistake, wasn't it?

James. Lily …it was all a big mistake. Peter. He had betrayed them. Betrayed them. 'Betrayal' was such an ugly word.

There was a sound and Sirius felt the coldness overwhelm him. Dementors.

They were in his head, filling him with thoughts of murder and James. He could hear them violating him. Rotten creatures.

_Dementors._

_**Even though you're so close to me**_

_**You're still so distant **_

_**And I can't bring you back**_

A happy thought, Sirius urged himself as his hands became sweaty and slipped against the bars. It was so cold but he was numb to it. Just any happy thought. Remus' bloody stupid hat. Harry bouncing up and down in his arms squealing "Padfeet!" The time when James had gotten drunk on five bottles of Butterbeer…who the hell still got drunk on Butterbeer at the age of seventeen anyway?

When he saw James' body, body on the ground, eyes still open…he didn't cry.

It was unlike James to play dead, even when they were eleven and pretending to be evil 'dark' wizards. James had always preferred to be the Auror – the one who killed the evil dark wizard. To him, playing dead was boring.

"James!" he had yelled. "It's not funny! Wake up you bloody idiot!" and he had given his friend a good slap on the shoulder.

But James hadn't responded. Not to any of the friendly shoves and pushes that Sirius gave him. He acted as if he hadn't even heard Sirius yell. Insensitive prick.

Perhaps he was unconscious.

Sirius did his best but he couldn't wake James up. "Wake up wake up wake up," he had had a cold and his voice was gruff. His throat kept on locking up. "Wake up wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up," he choked out. He checked for a pulse and was getting hysterical as he couldn't find one.

It had started raining. Sirius was freezing, his teeth were chattering. "James you must be cold. You-you're cold aren't you Prongs?" He searched desperately for a blanket or a piece of cloth or something to warm his best friend. "James, why are you looking at me like that? Why are you staring at me? James, you're cold right? Prongs? Prong-sie? You're going to get the flu and then Lily will skin me alive. James? Where are you?"

_Where are you?_

_**It's true the way I feel**_

_**Was promised by your face**_

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Sirius croaked. He hurried and went looking for something warm to cover James. He tripped and saw…

Lily Potter. She was lying on the ground, the expression on her face the same as James'. They both had the same expressionless faces. "Lily?" Sirius backed away. Now he felt sick. He vomited his dinner, his lunch and breakfast out.

"No. Lily? James?"

They couldn't be…they couldn't be…How could they be?

James had just had his twenty-third birthday for fuck's sake. Twenty-three year old people just don't die. It isn't natural.

Sirius continued banging on the bars, screaming like a mad man. He hit the bars with all he had and could feel the sharp sting as the skin peeled off his knuckles and his voice became hoarse.

_Where are you? I need you. **  
**_

_**The sound of your voice**_

_**Painted on my memories**_

"Good luck Padfoot," James had patted Sirius on the back. They had just finished switching the Fidelius Charm from Sirius to Peter. "That was some cool bit of spell work too, Sirius. Thank you and take care of yourself. We probably won't see you for a while, not until you-know-who gets over…." He swallowed.

"Don't worry about me," Sirius breathed a sigh of relief. "I'll be fine."

_Really?_

_**Even if you're not with me**_

He wouldn't see them anymore, would he? But why wouldn't he? They were his _best_ friends, they were his _family_. He still had a lot to say to them. Where would they go? How did they go?

In Sirius' private opinion, he believed himself to be invincible. He was just a young man. Death didn't seem that dire to him even though it was everywhere. He had always envisioned himself to living a long time. Life was just life to him…James _couldn't _die. He was perfectly healthy and didn't have any sickness whatsoever. How could he die? He was there the other day wasn't he, looking rather pale but smiling anyway. And how could Lily, beautiful energetic bossy Lily not be _here_ in the world?

He played with a scenario in his mind, mulling it over. He was going crazy and in reality, James and Lily were perfectly healthy. In fact they were standing outside his…cell.

_Where the hell was he?_

_**I'm with you**_

He was back in his prison cell again. He noticed the black hooded shapes outside his cells and he recoiled. Dementors.

"The Patronus is the only spell that can repel Dementors…."

The crystal-clear voice of his best friend James reading a Defence against the Dark Arts textbook filled his head. It haunted him.

He was seventeen years old again.

_**You now I see, keeping everything inside**_

_**With you **_

James and Lily had disappeared. Now in their place stood his mother. She was frowning at him. He was seventeen.

"You're disowned. You're nothing."

He stood as he watched his mother char his name off the Black family tree. He felt the emotions: the relief, the anger, the humiliation, the pride, the freedom, the loneliness and the sadness. It was a mixture of all of them, he honestly couldn't tell which one he felt more. He didn't say anything. He had nothing to say.

"_I am nothing." _

_**You know I see, even when I close my eyes**_

_**With You**_

_**You now I see, keeping everything inside**_

_**With you**_

It was all Peter's fault really.

Immediately, his mind became filled with Peter. It was like an obsession.

His brain had screamed at him to think of something else – something pleasant, something to drive away the Dementors but all he could think about was Peter. Oh, and how sweet his death would be.

Not the melodramatic faux suicide scene but the actual death of Peter Pettigrew.

_**You now I see, even when I close my eyes**_

He could envision it just now, he would blast Peter into a million pieces. He wanted to glorify, to revel in his old friend's death so much, it hurt. He hated Peter so much, he felt as if he couldn't breathe. Hating Peter lessened the grief of James' and Lily's death.

Before he would kill Peter though, Peter would have to beg for his life. Sirius would have sold his soul to look at Peter's pathetic face before pounding it into a bloody pulp.

_**I hit you and you hit me back**_

_**We fall to the floor**_

He had met Peter just yesterday. He hadn't been meaning to, the shock and horror of what had happened had just sunken in and before he knew it, he was looking into the eyes of the person of his very thoughts.

Peter had squealed and sobbed and perhaps had yelled "Lily and James how could you". Sirius had no interest in what the bloody bastard had to say for himself. He did the only thing he wanted to do. He wanted Peter to suffer. Wanted to torture him. In a public street, in front of all the muggles, he didn't give a shit.

Perhaps the look in his eye gave it away for Peter was so scared of him. The idiot had preferred to blow himself up. If only Sirius had gotten to his wand before…oh, he would do much much more than blow Peter up. Peter knew didn't he?

_He laughed._

_**The rest of the day stands still**_

_**Fine line between this and that**_

Sirius had a very twisted sense of humor. He saw the entire irony of the situation, of the double-crosser Peter and his sadistic side was amused. He had laughed at the cowardice of the fool, of the sick satisfaction he would feel if he felt Peter's neck snap against his bare hands, the muscles tear as he ripped apart the ligaments and the beautiful red colours of a traitor's blood soaking through the clothes. That was what he dreamt of. What he wanted.

_A dream is a wish your heart makes. _

_**But when things go wrong**_

_**I pretend that the past isn't real**_

But what a person wants and has are two completely different things.

If Sirius got what he wanted, he wouldn't be sitting in this cell would he?

Actually maybe he would. For the murder and torture of Peter Pettigrew.

He laughed harshly again. Two days in Azkaban had already brought out the sick insane side of Sirius Black. The side that nobody had ever seen.

_This was life. _

_**I'm trapped in this memory**_

_**And left in the wake of the mistake**_

_**Slow to react**_

It was so fucking funny. Pettigrew could murder his best friends in cold blood but he was pissing his pants at the thought of Sirius Black.

_**You're still so distant**_

_**And I can't bring you back**_

Sirius hadn't cried at all, not once. Sirius never cried. When his mother had disowned him, he hadn't. When members of the Order had been brutally dispatched one by one, he had grieved certainly but never cried. He couldn't cry. It was a habit broken by his mother. "Well-bred pureblood gentlemen never cry," his mother had told him once when he was eight with a broken arm. He remembered wincing as tears had sprung to his eyes with the pain. But he hadn't cried. Not even when he had retorted that his mother's comment made her sound as if he was an animal and she had backhanded him, cutting his face with her ring.

Since then he had never tasted the salt from his tears. The crease in his eyelid had never stuffed up due to over crying and puffy eyes. Many times, he was proud of the fact that he was 'so damn manly' but now he was deeply ashamed.

Deeply ashamed that he couldn't even cry for James and Lily Potter.

What kind of person was he? If he couldn't cry for the thing he loved most in the world….Everybody would cry. Everybody except

_For a monster._

_**No, I won't let you control my fate**_

_**While I'm holding the world, on my conscience**_

His mother had told him that he was a monster. A monster for turning his back on his family. What has she gotten wrong? She had brought him up with all the money and prestige in the world and with the traditional ideals a Black should know. So why the hell was he such a failure? He broke his mother's heart. She had such high hopes for him. Regulus was never the son he was. Regulus lacked that charisma, that ruthless ambition and the sadism.

She had told him that he would one day end up feeling sorry for himself, that he would wish that he never threw it all away. He never thought that she'd be right. It was his fault. He had suggested that he switch with Pettigrew. It was as if his mother had jinxed him (he wouldn't be surprised if she actually had though).

_**No, I won't let you just sit here and wait**_

_**While you're weighing your options**_

_**You're making a fool of me**_

He had once said that to his parents. He was a rebellious ticking mind bomb. He was a _stupid_ rebellious ticking mind bomb. He was fifteen back then when he had criticized his parents.

His younger brother didn't talk to him for weeks after that. His father wouldn't even look at him. His mother cried and screamed and was bed-ridden. He didn't care.

_He didn't care._

_**No, you didn't dare try to say that you don't care**_

**_And solemnly swear not to follow me there_**

He didn't care about his family.

He didn't care when he saw the body of his brother, entrails trailing on the ground as the Aurors carelessly dragged the body. His brother was just another stamp on the page, another headline in the newspaper, another gruesome picture with his handsome features bruised and his bones broken.

He didn't care because his best friend was there where he broken down. Sobs wracking his body but no tears actually leaking out. His best friend sat there, just listening to boring stories about Sirius' childhood. How Regulus was such a happy child, a sharp contrast to the resentful Sirius. How Regulus was always fair, he always begged Sirius not to rile mother up anymore – couldn't he see how sad mother was? It was Regulus who smuggled bits of food for Sirius when he had been grounded and sent to his room without supper. Regulus who took Sirius' beatings for him and never complained, not once. Regulus the golden child.

Regulus the _dead_ golden child. It had killed Sirius to see the man Regulus had become. He was such a good child, it had been a waste.

_And who was he to talk?_

_**No, it ain't like me to beg on my knees**_

_**Oh please oh baby please, that's not how I'm doing things**_

Sirius didn't believe in God because he didn't like the idea of a higher power and how he wasn't in control of his own worthless existence. But now he was pleading with God to give him a second chance.

_One day_, he prayed. _One day, I will avenge Lily and James' death or I'll die trying._

_**No, I'm not upset, no I'm not angry**_

He was completely numb. Silently he wondered whether he was doing all this for his friends' sake or his own.

_**I know love is love and**_

_**Love, sometimes it pains me**_

He had loved James more than he had loved anything else. James was his brother for Regulus had wanted nothing to do with him. James was Sirius' Regulus. He was the Regulus that Sirius wanted. James had saved Sirius from himself.

When Sirius was sixteen, he had realized what a masochist he was. He had a sick fascination for pain. He would always remember 'accidentally' scraping his fingers while sharpening his quill and just feel. It would be just him and the hurt but he never felt alone.

_Like he was now. _

_**I'll always be with you**_

_**You'll never forget me**_

Perhaps the reason why Peter was so scared was because he had seen that side of Sirius Black. Sirius didn't mean to.

He was nineteen and Lily had invited all the Marauders for dinner at her muggle parents' home. Her mother had left a bowl of hot soup on the table and Sirius had accidentally touched it. His hand jerked away from the pain for a minute before he gingerly placed his hand on the bowl and held it there for a few minutes. He had no idea why he did it and he had suffered from burns and everybody had brushed it off as an accident anyway (Mrs. Evans apologized profusely and had wanted to call for medical aid). Only Peter had seen the whole thing, known that Sirius had done it on purpose. He had never ever told on him though. Nevertheless, it still freaked Sirius out that Peter was watching him all this time.

_**I'm keeping you with me**_

_**No, I won't let you take me **_

_**To the end of my ropes**_

His mother had called him a sentimental idiot. She had tormented him with her sick mind games. He wondered what his mother thought of him now – now that he had a life sentence in Azkaban.

_**And no, I won't let you keep**_

**_Torching and burning my soul_**

She'd be as smug as a bug. He had it coming. Although he did rather pity her even though he hated his mother, including her guts. Unlike Regulus, he did not listen to everything she said adoringly.

He was a failure and Regulus was dead. But then again, what did she expect? She deserved it; if anybody deserved two deceased sons (he was just as good as dead). What the hell was his father thinking anyway when he married his mother?

_**No, I'm not your puppet**_

He refused to be manipulated like a little toy and then thrown away. All his life, he had been trying to get past boundaries and break rules. Like a rebel without a cause, he broke rules for the sake of it.

_**And no no no, I won't let you go**_

No rule would come between him and Peter's corpse.

_**No matter how far we've come**_

_**I still want to see tomorrow**_

The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

He owed Remus and little Harry Potter that. The thought of Harry learning to hate his name and fantasizing about killing him sickened him. God knew why because he was doing the same thing to Peter.

_**No matter how far we've come by**_

_**I still want to see tomorrow**_

In the end, the only thing that mattered was that he was innocent. He might be a lot of things but he was definitely innocent of both charges. That meant something. Gave him hope, something he had always had. Something knowing James had given him.

_**With you**_

_**You now I see, keeping everything inside**_

He saw the Dementors appearing outside. Felt the cold take over him. Maybe he even relished it.

_**With you**_

_**You now I see, even when I close my eyes**_

Voices were crying in his head. "I'm innocent," he whispered, hugging himself. Even though the Dementors would never be able to suck it out of him, he doubted whether it would be enough to stop the insanity.

_**With you**_

_**You now I see, keeping everything inside**_

He found himself face to face with a memory of Regulus again. This time, he guessed that he was around eleven years old talking to his very serious-looking eight year old brother.

"I'll miss you Sirius," his brother said formally but his voice shook and Sirius had laughed and helped his brother up the tree.

"I have a surprise for you," he smiled fondly at the younger boy gazing up at him with all the attention a young child gives to somebody they love.

A cry of astonishment followed after Sirius unclasped a fine gold chain from his neck. "Do you know the story of Jacob and Esau, Regulus?"

The young boy listened transfixed as Sirius began the tale.

_**With you**_

_**You now I see, even when I close my eyes**_

"I don't understand," the confusion was obvious in the boy's eyes. "You're giving me your birthright?"

Sirius nodded. "With me at Hogwarts, you'll be the eldest Black boy. Never show anybody else though especially mother. You know that it'll get me into trouble. Understand?"

As Regulus nodded hesitantly, Sirius placed the chain around his neck. The chain bearing the crest of Black. It had gone to every firstborn son of the household. "And then when I come back for the holidays, you can give it to me. It'll be one of our secrets. Cross your heart, hope to die?"

But Regulus had never given it back and Sirius had forgotten about it as time went on. When Regulus had died, the chain was still on his broken neck and it was returned, bloodstains and all, to him.

_**I'm with you**_

He unclasped the chain from his own neck and ran his fingers along the outline of the motto ("Toujours Pur").

"Don't come, don't come….I know you!" the wizard in the cell next to him mumbled. "Black. Black. Every person has a black side. Even you! Even you! Even the angels in hell…oh save me. Salvation is here!"

Sirius cast a disgusted look to his right and laughed out aloud.

"You've got it right," he crushed the pointy end of the crest against his palm and felt it digging into his flesh. It hurt a lot. "Every fucking body has a black side."

And this time he welcomed the coldness enveloping him as he confronted all the faces around him. If he, Sirius Black, was doomed to a lifetime of insanity, he might as well enjoy it.


End file.
